The Thing (17 page)

"Then get a move on," Macready urged him. The younger man turned and jogged off toward the big maintenance barn. "Childs, you come with me. We got work to do."

Macready put his arm around the big mechanic and the two strolled off into the snow, chatting animatedly. Slightly bewildered, the rest of the men watched them go. Ice and snow swirled around them.

Garry shouted after the pilot. "What are you going to do when you catch up to them?"

Bennings was reading the list Macready had handed to him. "Holy shit," he muttered aloud.

The station manager looked over at him, noticing the list. "What's that about?"

Bennings handed it over. "Whatever he's planning to do, he isn't fucking around."

Garry studied the list, then looked up and off to his left. But the two men were already out of sight, swallowed up by the darkness and blowing snow.

Childs worked fast. He was familiar with the equipment Macready had requisitioned, in addition to which he'd used some of it very recently. The adjustments he was making weren't complicated, just highly illegal. But Garry knew about them, and be hadn't raised any objections. Not yet.

Probably figures it's our funeral, the mechanic thought as he tightened a screw. And he's probably right. But as far as Childs was concerned, Macready was more right. The way Childs saw it, they didn't have a choice. If those dogs were
things
now and not dogs, and if they somehow, someway managed to make their way into another unsuspecting camp . . .

Childs came from a neighborhood where people had died because no one wanted to get involved, because no one wanted to risk themselves to help the fellow across the street. It made him sick, which is why he'd moved away as soon as he was old enough.

He wasn't going to let that sort of thing happen here.

He tightened the screw a last half turn, then put the screwdriver aside and raised the torch. Holding it firmly in his left hand he opened the new valves with the right.

There was a brief sputtering sound. Uncertain flames spurted from the nozzle. He slowly pulled back on the lever fitted to the metal.

A sudden roar erupted in the rear of the workshed and a streak of fire shot fifteen feet across the dark ice.

Childs shut the torch down, frowning as he chose another tool from the chest at his feet. The arc was too wide and he was losing distance. Have to narrow it down some.

Macready strolled out of the shed and came up behind him. The mechanic glanced up from his work. "You see that?"

The pilot was looking out across the ice. "Yeah. Looks pretty good."

"If I narrow the field I can get maybe another five, six feet out of it."

Macready rested a hand on Childs's shoulder. "Forget it. I'd rather have the wider coverage."

"Okay. You're the boss." Childs put back the unused socket wrench and rose. "How's Palmer coming?"

Macready glanced back toward the shed. "Just about through. That kid does better work stoned than most guys do with a clear head."

"If there were any clear heads around here," Childs countered angrily, "we wouldn't have to be doing this."

Macready had no comeback for that one.

Palmer was bent over the snowmobile engine. The cowling was up and you couldn't see his head, but you could hear him working away at the machine's guts. The other snowmobile sat nearby, trimmed and ready to run. Its rear seat had been replaced with a fiberglass storage box.

A wheelbarrow on skids slid into the room. Bennings blew on his gloved hands, a gesture more reflexive than useful, and shut the shed door behind him. He pulled off the gloves and sauntered over to peer past Palmer's arched back.

"How's it coming?"

Palmer glanced up at him. "Almost through." Mechanic's grease darkened his face.

The back door to the shed opened, admitting another blast of frigid air along with Childs and Macready. The big man had disconnected the torch from its tank and carried it gingerly.

Macready noticed the meteorologist immediately. "You get the stuff, Bennings?"

"Garry hemmed and hawed a little, but only a little." He indicated the wheelbarrow he'd brought.

"Right." Macready moved toward it, slipping off his parka. Childs was folding up the thick hose attached to the torch and packing it in the storage container mounted on the rear of the waiting snowmobile.

The pilot opened the lid of the wheelbarrow, glanced perfunctorily at the contents, and then moved a tow sled into position behind the other snowmobile. A flexible cable linked the two together.

"Final check," Bennings announced, reading from a list. It was the same list Macready had given him earlier. "Box of dynamite already fused, box of thermite likewise, three shotguns, box of flares, two flare guns, thirty cans gasoline and a case of medicinal alcohol." He put the list in a pocket and looked over at Macready. "Going to get it drunk if you can't blow it up?"

Macready, making sure the trailer hitch was tight, ignored the meteorologist's sally.

"Okay. Let's load 'em."

The sun didn't actually rise this time of year in the southern polar regions. It just peeked hesitantly over the ice and spent a few hours crawling along the horizon until, seemingly exhausted by the effort, it vanished abruptly into the lingering night.

The snowmobiles rumbled smoothly across the twilight landscape, their engines thrumming with unaccustomed extra horsepower thanks to Palmer's ministrations and the addition of the larger carburetors. Bennings piloted the one pulling the trailer while Macready and Childs doubled up on the other.

From time to time they stopped to check the trail. Snow whistled around them, but the flakes were tiny and stayed airborne more often than they settled to the ground.

The dogs had been running hard and fast. Their paw prints were widely spaced. So far the tracks had remained visible. That couldn't last forever, they knew. Soon wind and snow would fill them in. It was a race to see which would give out first: the dogs or their tracks.

Macready took regular sightings his binoculars, the three men rotating driving shifts. Now something dark and irregular showed against the ice just ahead and slightly to their right.

He tapped Childs on the back, keeping his balance on the passenger seat. "Something over there!" he shouted over the roar of the engine. "Over there!" He pointed several times to indicate direction.

Childs nodded acknowledgment and angled the vehicle slightly to the right. Off to his left, Bennings swerved to match the new course.

Soon you could see it without binoculars. The two snowmobiles slowed as they approached.

It was surrounded by dog tracks. The prints were crowded and repetitive, signs of a short but intense struggle having disturbed the snow.

The dark lump was the half-eaten remains of a husky. Its hind legs and lower body had been picked clean. Torn hide flapped loosely in the wind. The top half of the body, from the sternum up, was missing.

Macready turned a slow circle, searching first with his eyes and then through the binoculars. There was no sign of the missing part of the dog or of its two companions.

"What is it?" Childs muttered, staring distastefully at the mangled husky.

Macready put the binoculars back in their case and walked out into the snow, following the line of still visible tracks. The line was narrower now.

"Maybe dinner," he muttered. The dim horizon showed nothing but faint light and a lowering sky.

"Dogs don't eat each other." Bennings kicked at the frozen body. "I'm no expert like Clark, but I know that much. A dog would rather starve than eat its own kind."

"I know," Macready said softly.

Childs had moved away from the body and was turning a slow half-circle. "Where's the other half?"

"Not around here," Macready told him. "I checked with the binocs. Probably took it along with them."

"For the next meal?" Childs spat into the snow.

"I'd think so. See, that's what Garry wasn't figuring on. One dog couldn't make it a thousand miles. One dog living off one or two others . . ." He let the obvious go unsaid. "Very convenient, having a steady food supply that travels with you on its own legs."

He went over to the snowmobile trailer, flipped up the lid and removed a two-gallon can of gasoline He unscrewed the cap, then glanced over at Bennings.

"They're still moving in a straight line. Where are these tracks headed?"

"Nowhere," the meteorologist insisted. "Just straight toward the ocean."

"That's something, anyway." The pilot silently poured the contents of the can over the remains. The men stepped clear. Macready pulled a crumpled piece of paper from a parka, pocket and lit it with his lighter, tossing it toward the remains. The bone and skin caught instantly and burned with a steady flame in the steady wind.

"Let's move."

Some of the initial enthusiasm was seeping away from his companions. They'd already traveled a long way from the warmth and comfort of the outpost. Now the gnawed remains of the sled dog had again reminded them of just how deadly an adversary they were pursuing.

"Maybe we ought to think this through again, Mac," Childs murmured half apologetically. He nodded toward the horizon. "They could be hours ahead of us."

Bennings surveyed the feeble sun. "Gonna get dark soon, too. Supposed to be fifty below tonight."

Macready, straddling the snowmobile towing the supply trailer, ignored them both. "Turn back if you want to. I'm going after them."

His companions exchanged an uncertain look, then started toward the machines.

"He's crazy for wanting to go on with this," Childs muttered unhappily.

"Yeah?" Bennings climbed onto the seat behind the mechanic. "Maybe not. Maybe we're the ones who are crazy for thinking of turning back."

"Ah, shut up." Childs gunned the engine.

Only a slight glow came from a sun the color of stale sherbet as the snowmobiles continued to follow the fading dog tracks. Quite unexpectedly, the trail changed direction. Macready slowed to a stop. Childs and Bennings pulled up along side him, their engines idling roughly.

"What's wrong, Mac?" the mechanic asked.

The pilot broke snow from his beard. The tracks had turned toward a ridge of low hills and snowcapped bluffs. It was very cold now.

"They turn off that way."

Childs rose in his seat and stared off in the indicated direction. "You think we can get in there?"

"As long as it doesn't get too steep," Macready told him. "You still with me?"

Childs looked back at Bennings. The meteorologist nodded. "Hell, it's too late to turn back tonight anyway. Might as well keep going 'til we stop for sleep. We can argue about what to do tomorrow morning."

"That's fair enough." Macready resumed his seat and veered his machine toward the rocks.

The terrain was more rugged than the pilot had supposed. High cliffs of solid ice rose from the little canyon they were exploring. Pressure ridging had been at work here in ancient times, as well as seismic forces. He felt like an ant crawling up a broken mirror.

They'd been using the snowmobile's headlamps since they'd entered the canyon. The sun hardly supplied enough light to see your own feet. But at least the dog tracks stood out starkly. The shielding cliffs had protected them from the blowing snow.

Bennings was uncomfortable in the maze. Out on the ice flats nothing could spring out at you, catch you by surprise. He wasn't in the mood for surprises. Not here.

What am I doing here, he thought? I should be back in camp, taking anemometer readings, watching the barometer, figuring fronts and lows and plotting percentage drops in temperature gradients against old figures in manuals.

Instead I'm freezing to death while we hunt a couple of dogs that maybe aren't dogs because their DNA has been altered by the invasion of something a hundred millennia old that got buried in the ice and dug up by a bunch of overeager unsuspecting Norwegians who—

He blinked. The snowmobiles were slowing down. He tried to see around Childs's bulk.

Dead ahead, caught in the light from the snowmobiles headlamps, was a single husky. Bennings didn't know whether to feel frightened or gratified.

The dog could have cared less. It sat in the middle of the little canyon, its back turned unconcernedly toward the approaching men, and munched contentedly on the upper half of the dog carcass they'd encountered out on the plain.

The lack of fear or any other recognizable reaction made Macready doubly cautious. He slowed his own vehicle and raised a hand. Childs and Bennings eased up alongside him.

He pointed at their quarry. It was barely twenty yards away and still gave no sign that it was aware of their presence. "What d'you make of that?"

"That's our runner, no question about that," Childs murmured. "It's finishing up its buddy, just like you said it would."

Macready carefully searched the canyon's rim, first the right side and then the left. Nothing could be seen among the crags. Nothing moved.

"Why the hell's it just sitting there?"

"Who gives a shit." Bennings was too cold for complex thinking. "Let's torch it and move on."

"I'm not sure . . ." Macready began.

Bennings interrupted him. "Don't go clever on me now, Mac. Either we finish this one now or I'm taking one of the mobiles, and heading home."

Childs was already unloading the torch and hooking it to the tank. Macready shrugged, arming himself with a thermite bomb. When Childs was ready they started up the sides of the canyon, each hugging the cliff wall. Bennings stood on guard at the snowmobiles in case the dog might try running past them at the last minute.

As Childs and Macready approached, the dog continued to ignore them, seemingly content merely to chew its food. The mechanic's eyes roved the landscape, trying to see into the darkness beyond the animal, into the area out of reach of the snowmobiles' headlights.

"Where's the other one, Mac? Where in hell's the other one?"

Macready shouted back toward the machines. "There's only the one of 'em here, Bennings! Keep a sharp eye out for the other one."